Leap Year, S2, Ep2 – Fun Facts

1. Emma Caulfield was great. Quirky, hilarious and a perfectionist. Those huge monologues in the bar are a pain to memorize but she worked hard to get those down and fretted every time it wasn’t just right. I really admire that in an actor and very much appreciated it, considering she was in-between shooting two other big projects. It was also, as an actor, really fun to be in a scene with her — she gives a lot and it’s very fun to play and find that rhythm with her.

She’s been jockeying on Twitter to have a Smiley spin-off. What do you guys think?

2. The roof where Smiley stands is actually the roof of the C3D office. It ended up being a really versatile location — all the street scenes with Smiley are also on that giant, street-looking roof. It was a great controlled environment and allowed us not to have to run all over the city with the limited time we had with Emma.

3. All of Emma’s scenes were shot over 2 days.

4. Aaron has a San Jose Sharks hockey stick on his desk. This is because I love the Sharks more than I love you, reader.

5. In the script, Glenn is supposed to juggle some debris. The laptop bit was all improv and hilarious, as Dustin Toshiyuki usually is. Dustin also does all of our sound, post and on-set (except for his scenes, obviously).

6. Bryn’s screensaver is the Matrix number code (seen in the scene with me, Wilson and Smiley) because she is Neo.

7. The music is great once again, and all done by Vlad and Monica. Seriously, if you ever need music, hire them, they can do everything.

8. Vlad and I wrestled with the style of this episode for a while. After the trauma of the break-in, we wanted our main characters to be outside of themselves and couldn’t quite figure out how to make it work. Finally, Vlad called and said, “I’m going to do something crazy…” and turned it into a noir thing. It not only hit that point, but also gave us room to lighten the mood a bit. Not to mention — what’s better than a noir in San Francisco?

9. The bar in the first episode and second episode is called Pe Yale (3131 Fillmore Street, San Francisco). It’s a fantastic place, and the owner is incredibly awesome. He let us use his bar for free, even though I’m sure we drove him nuts, and was just really kind and cool about the whole thing. Thank you, Kamran! Now go to his bar everyone.

10. Aaron and Lisa’s “son” is played by tiny, little Arya — who, in that one scene, out-acted me in everything.

11. Emma holding a picture of Eliza Dushku is the closest you’ll get to a Buffy reunion.